Place on hard surface, light fuse, and get away

[The_LED_Museum]

Recognise that phrase?

It's from the web page I made about the "Super6", a 6-Luxeon Star LED flashlight being introduced by InReTech (http://www.inretech.com), a new flashlighthead out of Oregon. For some reason, he's not able to get Candlepower Forums to come up on his end, otherwise he'd have posted something in one of the forums about it by now, as I suggested he do.

The flashlight is based on a 3-D Mag Lite, and comes either as a simple drop-in module, or as a completely assembled and ready-to-use flashlight if you don't have a 3-D Mag to spare. The modification is 100% reversible; as long as you didn't throw away the reflector & the little metal collar that normally holds the light bulb in the socket.
So if you have this mod, and later want to move it from one Mag to another, that's OK.

It consists of 6 batwing Luxeons and 6 power SMD resistors on what appears to be a commercially-prepared, round PCB; this is affixed to a thick copper slug; which itself is affixed to a plastic adapter that goes in the head of the Mag. With new alkaline batteries, the flashlight draws 1.020 amps, and even with the extremely wide beam angle, registered more than 47,000mcd on the Meterman. Remember, wider beam angles always mean much lower meter readings.

For this very reason, this flashlight will not provide an effective demonstration during daylight hours or in a brightly lit room. Take this one in a really dark place before turning it on for the first time if you want to really see it shine.

I posted a review of it at http://www.ledmuseum.org/super6.htm
The sample I got came as a complete, ready-to-use flashlight. Because it is available as a complete flashlight, and its maker wants to commercialise it, I decided this forum would be a better place to post than the user modified lights forum. But it really is a toss-up as to which forum this belongs in.

 

[Saaby]

He he he, Craig I think that's one of my fav. reviews on your site, especially the part with the pic of that new Dell and everything with that witty caption "Paper target useless"

 

[EMPOWERTORCH]

This obviously takes the Lambda Hydra's crown as the world's brightest LED torch.
Do you get free shares in Duracell with this torch, and is it actually brighter than a similar sized halogen bulb equipped torch?
It's very bright but the short battery life would limit its use somewhat...my night walks often last 5 or 6 hours, so I would have to carry 3 sets of batteries with this torch!
A suggestion to make it more practical would be to have a lower power level mode for extended use, and then go into blast mode when you need thed torch to be bright.
This technology though might have its uses, say, as a trail bike headlight, where power could be drived from the bike's generator. The unbreakable rugged construction of LED technology would really suit that kind of application.
Looking at the maker's web site it looks as though there's a lot more to come.

 

[Jonathan]

I don't think that this lamp is necessarily brighter than Lambda's designs.

1) These two lamps fill different niches; Lambda's designs use the LS with optics, to produce a concentrated beam. The Super6 just uses the emitters, to produce a flood beam.

2) The Super6 operates at lower total current than Lambda's designs, meaning less power in. But this is distributed over a larger number of emitters, meaning greater efficiency.

3) Lambda uses the LS units with the metal core PCBs, which are then attached to a larger aluminium plate. The emitters of the Super6 appear (from the pictures) to be sitting directly on PCB material which is a much poorer thermal conductor, which then sits atop a copper slug, which is a very good thermal conductor (though looking at the pictures again: is there thermal epoxy under the emitters? Does this go to the PCB or to the copper below?) In any case, it is unclear who has the better heat sinking, which is needed for efficiency.

I can't wait to hear more about this flashlight!

-Jon

-Jon

 

[Kill-O-Zap]

I'm unimpressed by the overall product, I'd like to have seen fewer emitters drawing close to two amps. More importantly, I think a 120 degree beam is a nice option, but I would not want to be limited to just that; more often than not, a narrower beam would be needed. What might have been great is to have LS optics glued to the front lens, which you can remove to get the wide beam (perhaps dropping in a second, plain front lens). That would be cool.

The best thing about this product is that plastic adaptor of theirs, that's a great idea. If we could just get some of those adapters, MAG mods would just be soooooo easy. I would make some changes to the design, however. I would have the copper (or aluminum) heatsink make direct contact with the lip near the bottom of the MAG head. This one seems to float high above that lip. The heatsink would not be glued to the plastic part out of the box, you would glue it yourself. In the cavity inside the plastic adapter, you could stick in whatever electronics you want (e.g one or more LI's or MM/BB's) before gluing on the heatsink "cap".

Ok, so any mod'ers out there ready to sign on to this project? Me want some of these adapters.

--Sal

 

[geepondy]

Just visited their web site. More information about the products would be appreciated. For an instance the 2AA completely assembled light for $35 looks like it might be a good deal but very little information is given about the light, just the lumen rating and estimated battery life. I assume it also must be a luxeon but it's not stated nor any info on whether there is regulation provided.

 

[geepondy]

Originally posted by Saaby:
He he he, Craig I think that's one of my fav. reviews on your site, especially the part with the pic of that new Dell and everything with that witty caption "Paper target useless"

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">How many flashlights can you count in the picture? I "think" I can spot nine.

 

[The_LED_Museum]

Originally posted by geepondy:
How many flashlights can you count in the picture? I "think" I can spot nine.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I can easily spot 11, possibly as many as 14.

 

[The_LED_Museum]

Originally posted by geepondy:
Just visited their web site. More information about the products would be appreciated. For an instance the 2AA completely assembled light for $35 looks like it might be a good deal but very little information is given about the light,

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I have both the red and white versions of these, which I'll be posting on the website as soon as I finish writing an article for a magazine. I need to return these as well, but not nearly on the strict timeline I had to work with on the Super6. So I can take a bit more time with these.

The white is an LS. Appears to be hand-selected for low Vf; brightness is good, color is good, and the mod is a drop-in replacement for the original light bulb. The collimator rattles around inside the flashlight's head, and drops down over the LS when the flashlight halves are assembled. No parts removal from the flashlight body; reflector removal only from the head, and it appears to be reversible provided the reflector has not been disposed of, broken, or lost.

My only critical recommendation with this flashlight is that you hold the flashlight head & body upside-down when reassembling it. The reflector is removed and discarded or stashed away for future use; no modifications are done to the body or lampholder.

The red version uses what I believe to be an Agilent snap-LED. Extremely bright for a small-junction emitter, color is orangish-red, and it too is a drop-in replacement. Does not use the Mag's reflector (it is left in place); it's more of a wider-angle area light. Beam angle est. to be 45° or so. Much narrower than the big Super6 flashlight, but wider than most singles. It's bright for a single, easily outshining the red Photon II.

No parts are removed from the flashlight at all except the bulb, and no modifications are made to it.

More on these after I finish writing that magazine piece.

 

[yclo]

Well you don't count.. You know where they are to start with..

I can only spot 10.. maybe 11 but that's it.

YC

 

[TrevorNasko]

Looks good but without optics.....

I think my Lamda mag pill has nothing to fear.

 

[B@rt]

I count 13, maybe 14, depending on what's on the keyboard...

 

[The_LED_Museum]

Originally posted by *BlackBart*:
I count 13, maybe 14, depending on what's on the keyboard...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">You're probably as close as anybody's going to get. The area around the computer changes drastically day by day, and often hour by hour.

Let me pull up the original picture if I still have it and do a headcount... hmmmm... I don't have the original pic, only the compressed JPG.

I can see a Millennium 3, and the tip of a Firebug next to it. A pair of Infinities hangs nearby. By the mouse are three Mini-Mag conversions. In front of the KB is a Psycho-Bright and a green laser pointer. Next to the knife there's a Bison 2C with a LED-Lenser Triplex in front of it. Near the right edge of the table there's an Arc-LS, and behind a roll of tape is a Legend LX. That's 12 that are easily visible.

That looks like another Psycho-Bright on the top edge of the KB. A Boogie-Light unit is on top of the monitor, the very tip of a Micra Lithium can be seen in the upper right in front of a glass butterfly frame, and a strand of Forever Brights can be seen along the wall. That's it for anything that can be easily spotted.

Magnify... directly to the left of the Boogie Light's base is an LED UFO, and under that is an ASP Aspen still in its box.

Not visible (behind other objects) are about 2 dozen other small coin cell lights, a Stylus, a Stylus knock-off, a Blink-It, a 2-Bit, a pair of Tweakers, my prototype Arc-LS, a broken Zippo Zip-Lite, a Bison 2-AA, a 9-Star module, a couple of Arc AAAs, and numerous bagged ETG, Nichia, and Rat Shack LEDs. But they're all within the frame of that photograph.

 

[shipinretech]

Hello,

New on the forum, glad to be here. I am part of the InReTech staff and so my opinions on this product are biased. I am not the fellow who got to meet Craig. I am the one who looked at the first AA adapter for the Luxeon Star and said, "Wow that is bright, we ought to sell those!" It was an instinctive response, but it makes market sense; there are a lot of AA Mini-MAGs out there, and a lot of them have blown bulbs. I know from personal experience in the Navy that dropping your light onto a steel deck in the dark is bad.

One note on the red-orange adapter; it works pretty darn well on standard rechargeable batteries. The white adapter works on standard AA batteries, but not as brilliantly. I used one on a trip to Alaska last month, and it worked great because the color did not attract mosquitoes.

The other part that hasn't been mentioned is that the LS attached to a pair of AA batteries will continuously produce light for weeks. OK, you won't want to go searching for needles in a haystack after a couple of weeks of continuous use, but you will be able to read a newspaper with it. Once again, valuable Navy experience allows me to assure you that having any light is much better than no light.

This is a simple and rugged light that uses all the power the batteries have to give. We are working on making a better battery. More soon.